


In Which I Cast A Projection of my Fifth-Year Self Onto our Bathroom Mirror

by hopefullyanauthor



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Carry On Countdown (Simon Snow), M/M, SnowBaz, baz gets angsty, fifth year flashback, simon comforts him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 15:12:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10281872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopefullyanauthor/pseuds/hopefullyanauthor
Summary: I can’t quite remember why I cast this spell in the first place. Looking back at me in the mirror is a reflection slightly shorter than my own, eyes slightly wider, the grey stains under the eyes deepened, the lips bitten. Not a happy time, as I recall.(moved over from my old ff.net account)TW: self-harm, suicidal thoughts





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is from the carry on countdown in december 2016. (actually this was all i did for that...oops.) anyway the theme for that day was "fifth year" so i bashed this out. hope you enjoyed it. ^-^

I think I should have given up earlier. I should have decided to stop holding on, just released my aching, skinned fingers from the vague shards of glass that still reflect his light so brightly.

_If I walk into back into that room tonight, hungered and impatient, I will want to kill myself again. Don’t get me wrong, I already want to die; I just know that things are really bad when it’s my own hands I see choking my last breaths out, and not his._

Watching myself from the present is like watching a thunderstorm: I carry on waiting for the thunder, long after I’ve been blinded by the salt lightning. But there never was any, that’s the tragedy. No fulfilment, no lasting echo of closure to keep out the cold.

_Surely he can sense it, surely he knows by know. He’s thick, true, but he’s not oblivious. In fact, he’s been fucking following me. Around the school, into the catacombs, into the forest. Into my nightmares, my sick waking fantasies._

I can’t quite remember why I cast this spell in the first place. Looking back at me in the mirror is a reflection slightly shorter than my own, eyes slightly wider, the grey stains under the eyes deepened, the lips bitten. Not a happy time, as I recall. 

 _And what?_ my younger self seems to be saying to me, _what is it you want me to do?_ I am powerless to answer, not only because my voice will break the spell, but because it has been jerked out of my throat, replaced with the same fears I used to fight every day. And for so long, I thought they were dreams.

_I walked the length of that forest last night, sucking the life out of woodland animals like some sort of twisted fairy-tale princess. It was dark, a new moon, meaning that it was even more of a fucking mess; if I’m supposed to be nocturnal shouldn’t I have bloody night vision too?_

_And what irony, that a vampire, a dark creature can’t see his own way through the darkness. I would have cast a **“yonder window breaks”** , but magic never helps on nights like that. It’s just another admittance of how low I’ve sunk, so far beyond what I should have grown up to be.The once proud heir of Pitch trying to retain his dignity by acting Normal. My life is a cancellation of itself._

His eyes flash in the mirror. I have to remind myself that this is only a projection, he can’t see me, but that stare is so piercing - my own stare is so piercing - precisely because I know what he is thinking.

_Do you know how disgusting it is to feel a life end in your mouth, to capture a final breath with your tongue?_

Stop.

_And how seductive heat becomes after you realise you are flammable. You want to twist your fingers into it, the gold, licking tendrils of it, and pull as hard as you can, until the flames overtake you and raze your fingers to the bone._

Stop it. 

_Can you imagine what it must be like to reach into someone else’s chest, palm outstretched, -_

No, I never-

_and tear their heart away? What would it sound like? Would it still beat, belonging to someone else?_

I never imagined-

I didn’t mean to-

His eyes are so penetrating. He’s so lost.

‘You love him, in the future,’ I want to tell him. ‘You find each other.’

_He’ll kill me, you know. He has to._

He doesn’t. He won’t. He won’t, he loves you-

_And I want him to._

**“NO!”**

 

The door opens behind me, and the sound causes the mirror to steam up, and the image to vanish. 

“Baz? You alright?”

I realise that I am sitting on the floor, although I don’t know how I got there. Must have collapsed.

“Simon...think I fell...” I try and mumble, but he’s already curled around me, my head on his chest and my body enveloped in sweater sleeves. I must have been crying too, then, because his fingers are wet after touching my face.

He rocks me slowly, the two of us sitting on the bathroom floor of our old dorm, where the memories surround us in a haze no one else could understand. I’ll tell him everything later. For now, I focus on him and me, finally, _finally_ living.


End file.
